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Sargon of Lolcow

Started by Barry Admin, September 24, 2018, 01:21:28 PM

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Benevolent Despot

Sargon of Akkad is one of the system lords from Stargate, along with Lord Adonis.

Attila

This awful twunt recently launched a twitter attack against one of my colleagues; she was part of a big Classics conference recently, and he took huge exception when she tweeted about one of the papers she was attending. Absolutely nowt to do with him, but he went after her, insulting her, asking her why she didn't consult him about the paper (which she was attending, not presenting), just all sorts of nastygrams.

She blocked him off her Twitter account, but he looked her up online and followed up the tweets with vile emails to her work email account.

He came in view of my radar only because I had to do some prep stuff for a fresher lecture on ancient empires, and apparently he/his pals like putting his photo on the Wikipedia page of the actual Sargon.

Twat.

bgmnts

Consult him about the paper?

Attila

Quote from: bgmnts on September 25, 2018, 09:02:33 PM
Consult him about the paper?

He wanted to know why my colleague (whom he mistakenly thought was giving this particular paper at a Classics conference earlier this month) didn't contact him for advice/guidance/fuckknows on how to write this particular work. Apparently he thinks he's an expert on various areas of Classical history, and he took exception that some woman decided to give a paper on her area of research without asking him to vet it for her.

My colleague didn't give the paper herself; she was attending the sessions (she helped to organise the conference) and was tweeting about this interesting paper/talk, and somehow or another he sussed her out.

He then followed with so much crap on her twitter feed (personal, insulting attacks) that she ended up having to delete a hell of a lot of stuff off her twitter feed, block him and his various sock accounts, and then hasn't been back on twitter for the past two weeks or so.

He was so angry at being ignored/deleted from her account, he Googled her, found out her uni email address, and proceeded to bombard her with further shit on her work email.

He seems like a magical human being. She had no idea who the guy was or his existence until he somehow homed in on this innocent tweet she posted about another colleague and this conference.

bgmnts

Quote from: Attila on September 25, 2018, 09:08:53 PM
Apparently he thinks he's an expert on various areas of Classical history, and he took exception that some woman decided to give a paper on her area of research without asking him to vet it for her.

I had no idea about this. The idea he could be considered an academic scares me.

As does all the stalking and nasty insults.

Cuellar

It's not funny for your poor colleague but fucking hell, hahah.

"How could you, a real academic, not consult ME, a YouTuber who hates women and minorities on YOUR specialism??"

What a wank.

Attila

Quote from: Cuellar on September 25, 2018, 09:14:33 PM
It's not funny for your poor colleague but fucking hell, hahah.

"How could you, a real academic, not consult ME, a YouTuber who hates women and minorities on YOUR specialism??"

What a wank.

Yes! From what she was telling me yesterday, that was exactly his attitude -- seriously offended that someone had given this talk without consulting him, and what could they possibly know about it, etc., and then throwing a shitfit when instead of engaging him, she just went 'welp' and deleted/blocked his crap.


sevendaughters

guys i don't think that being a racist UKIP member who cyber-stalks someone while misrepresenting their expertise is reason to throw someone under the rain-wet wheels of your enmity bus.

Lemming

Quote from: Attila on September 25, 2018, 09:08:53 PMApparently he thinks he's an expert on various areas of Classical history, and he took exception that some woman decided to give a paper on her area of research without asking him to vet it for her.

Not just that, he's an expert in science, sociology and psychology (both of which, through his mastery of, he knows to be all fake and "unscientific"), philosophy, all major religions and literally anything else he decides to read the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article on.

Sounds like your friend was TERRORISED WITH THE SOCRATIC METHOD



sevendaughters

only someone with a cursory knowledge of philosophy and classics and a trenchant belief in being right as the the most important thing one can be could so tragically misunderstand the essentially collaborative, discursive, paternal, and supportive underpinnings of the Socratic method.

Attila

Quote from: Lemming on September 25, 2018, 09:36:53 PM
Not just that, he's an expert in science, sociology and psychology (both of which, through his mastery of, he knows to be all fake and "unscientific"), philosophy, all major religions and literally anything else he decides to read the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article on.

Sounds like your friend was TERRORISED WITH THE SOCRATIC METHOD



From what I've heard about him (admittedly very little, and only recently), I hope his idea of the Socratic method means drinking the entire dose of hemlock (because, as Woody Allen said, sometimes the poison's at the bottom.)

http://wwwdata.unibg.it/dati/corsi/40043/78500-Woody%20Allen%20-%20My%20Apology.pdf

manticore

My God that's grotesque Attila. When youtube first recommended one of his videos a few years ago, within a few minutes of him speaking I thought 'this bloke is upset and piqued about something and he's not going to deal with what it is, he's going to externalize it and project his internal conflicts on to some outside perceived threat.' You can hear it in his whole manner of speaking. It's so transparent that it would take a wilful blindness in his viewers not to see it.

I've watched quite a lot of the extreme right video makers out of interest in the social psychology of authoritarian personalities and conspiracy theorists. So many of them are patently unhappy, self-loathing people looking for evil external forces conspiring against them to explain their misery. I find it very difficult to imagine someone like Paul Joseph Watson or Tara McCarthy or Mark Collett experiencing anything like joy or happiness or real human affection.

Cuellar

He seems like a fucking annoying cunt so he's got that part of the Socratic method down.

Shit Good Nose

From Swindon.

Maybe he could start doing an angry podcast with Mark Lamarr?

sevendaughters

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on September 25, 2018, 10:01:00 PM
From Swindon.

Maybe he could start doing an angry podcast with Mark Lamarr?

English Settlement with of Akkad, Lamarr, and Partridge.

Sony Walkman Prophecies

Quote from: sevendaughters on September 25, 2018, 09:44:46 PM
only someone with a cursory knowledge of philosophy and classics and a trenchant belief in being right as the the most important thing one can be could so tragically misunderstand the essentially collaborative, discursive, paternal, and supportive underpinnings of the Socratic method.

More or less my immediate reaction. My knowledge of Socrates is a little rusty, but wasn't the whole point of the dialectic to arrive at a view together rather that one person emerging the victor? I suppose anything can be hijacked in the name of anything now we live in a world where not knowing anything has become the new normal.

Cuellar

I dunno, Socrates was literally so annoying they had to kill him.

Cloud

And here we go, on a similar note, a contact I tend to hold in high regard has posted a good old rant about how "the SJWs" are infiltrating and destroying Linux now (because the team have told Linus Torvalds it might be an idea to step down for a bit and learn how to stop hurling insults, from what I can tell).  The second "SJW" rant I've seen in a few days from this guy, he's been thoroughly sucked in...

You know, all these conspiracy theories about (((the SJWs))) trying to take things over.  It's almost like SJW is one letter away from an anagram.

Barry Admin

Quote from: Lemming on September 25, 2018, 07:58:55 AM
Jesus, I just watched his UKIP "speech". Some golden highlights, though the whole thing is a masterwork:

"British liberty is under threat - from many different sources. Whether it's communists on our university campuses, Islamists in our Northern towns, or censorious MPs in our own Parliament, there are people who want to CHANGE OUR WAY OF LIFE - FOREVER"

"I'd like to see UKIP expand it's remit from being the only party for Brexit, to being the party, broadly speaking, for British Values"

"This is where I'm planting my Union Jack. This is where I'm saying, "that's it, this is far enough and no further". So come the three corners of the world in arms, and we will SHOCK THEM"

What a fucking tosser.

The prior engagement he mentions in the video is Mythcon, and this prompted me to dig into the Wayback Machine for more info on something I'd read a while back on RationalWiki.


Quote from: RationalWiki"I wouldn't even rape you"

More recently, a British MP argued that internet freedom of speech requires that harassment of women become "unacceptable", though she failed to specify how. In particular, she mentioned rape threats. Benjamin felt obliged to tweet this insightful response:

Quote from: SardongI wouldn't even rape you, @jessphillips. #AntiRapeThreats #FeminismIsCancer

Since then, Benjamin has not apologised and continues to defend this exchange, which gathered him applause at a "skeptics" conference.[68]

And here's the article mentioned:

Quote from: https://web.archive.org/web/20180111160455/http://akkadiantimes.com/2017/10/i-wouldnt-even-rape-you-tweet-gets-cheers-applause-at-mythicist-milwaukee-mythcon/Mythinformation Conference hosted by Mythicist Milwaukee, their speaker Carl Benjamin was widely criticized for leading an online harassment campaign against a British MP using the phrase 'I wouldn't even rape you, Jess Phillips.'

In the week leading up to the conference, MythCon Co-founder Sean Fracek and Director Brian Edward defended their decision by calling Carl Benjamin an 'entertainer' and compared 600+ tweets aimed at the sexual assault survivor debating whether they would or wouldn't even rape to a joke that bombed.

Despite hearing concerns from many in the atheist and skeptic community that putting Carl Benjamin on their stage would normalize online abuse, Mythicist Milwaukee organizers went ahead.

On the day of the event, fans sporting Kekistani flags – the symbol is an adapted Nazi flags that Sargon uses as a way to mock identity politics – lined up to see the man who once doxed a woman wearing a 'Feminist' t-shirt, resulting in such harassment from his fans that she had to file a police report.

In the 1 minute clip from the interview/debate, Thomas Smith of Opening Arguments Podcast can be heard describing that a British MP, a sexual assault survivor, had launched a campaign to stop online misogyny and harassment. He then quoted the words Carl Benjamin tweeted at her, 'I wouldn't even rape you.'

Fans of Carl Benjamin cheer and applaud. Benjamin himself smiles widely and points to his cheering supporters from the stage.

What Carl Benjamin appears to say in response is also shocking.

'Yep. (inaudible)... understand why the moral outrage over that is something I just don't care about.'


Attendees react in disgust.
According to Smith, each time the phrase 'I wouldn't even rape you' was said during their debate, cheers and applause went up from Carl Benjamin's fans.

Eyewitness reports some women left the conference hall because they felt unsafe with Benjamin's fans cheering the rape line. A woman attendee told this author she nearly broke down in tears watching young men in the room applaud tweets about rape.

Conference organizers have not, at the time of publication, made any apologies to victims of sexual assault or rape if they were affected by what happened at their conference.

No word yet from Mythicist Milwaukee's Sean Fracek and Brian Edward if they are happy with the 'entertainment' Carl Benjamin provide his fans at the expense of survivors of sexual assault and rape.

Shocking, and just crazy. And again, the thing that makes the guy such a lolcow is he has absolutely no idea of his own limitations, and - as marquis_de_sad noted - he's been strutting about with the impression that he can actually become a major political force and influence, cackling at the idea that any of his internet fuckwittery might at some point come back and bite him right in the ballacks.

Because he had his picture taken with Farage, he started boasting about how he was only one degree of separation away from Trump, and that getting him on his YouTube channel was now only a matter of time. Mind you, if that did ever occur, they'd certainly have a lot of things in common to talk about.

colacentral

I've thought about starting a thread about Joe Rogan a few times. He's a dangerous cunt. I've heard lots of people I work with mention listening to his podcast, and I suspect he's the entry level to an interest in this bollocks, where traditionally having to watch a dry debate on the news or having to read would prohibit that audience from getting any exposure to it.

Rogan validates the views of cunts like Sargon by not being able to question him effectively. He'd probably argue it's fine as he has guests on with opposing views but A) he doesn't have that many, and B) it doesn't matter as a viewer / listener could see / hear one episode and miss another. That sort of "balance" only works when the opposing view points share the same stage and can address each other.

I can picture swarms of angry UFC fans looking for an explanation for why the world keeps telling them to behave in a certain way that they find contradictory to their base instincts, and Joe Rogan has the perfect vehicle to deliver them to the people who will give them the easy answers they're looking for.

It's an awful thing and I'd love a Joe Rogan scandal to emerge and take the whole thing down.

ajsmith2

#140
Neil, I was wondering how you feel about Count Dankula in light of his speech at the same UKIP event and ongoing explicit indiscriminate endorsement of and alignment with Sargon and the whole alt light brigade, given you were behind Dank's cause but also find Sargon and his beliefs laughably odious?

I want to make it clear I'm not bringing this up as a 'gotcha' to say 'aaah you is a hypocrite I wins'. As I said on the dedicated thread I'm very conflicted about how to react to the Dank case. (in fact this is the 3rd fucking time it's kept me awake at night to make a late night post hashing out my thoughts). But it's his (I'll just use the same phrase again, too tired to think of a paraphrase) explicit alignment with and endorsement of the same kind of cuntishness you despise in Sargon and others that makes me uncomfortable with wholeheartedly and indiscriminately getting behind supporting his cause. Which isn't me saying 'well that means lets forget free speech in this case, he deserved the jail cos I disagree with him politically' but it's why I always get the feeling I'm being played for a fool when I'm asked to unquestioningly get behind his deal: I feel that by doing so I'm being used to unwittingly Trojan Horse a larger, more sinister right wing agenda into more widespread acceptance. You might say the principle of the Dank case taken on it's own is the main thing that matters and needs to be upheld at all costs and I don't disagree but I also can't ignore the implications of the wider context it's being used in, and how they're important to consider too.

Here's Danks UKIP speech for the record. It's (as I thought it would be) fairly humble and not embarrassing like Sargons  and he makes some general and uncontroversial points about censorship etc that most reasonable folk would agree with in principle. (though I can't speak for the cases he cites other than his own, as I don't know them well enough). And the fact that he does make some agreeable points and isn't a laughing stock makes this more troubling to me than Sargon: that his experience has found a refuge in the far right and that someone who seems as down to earth and seemingly reasonable as he appears to (as an individual anyhow) can swallow and endorse a far right agenda and all it entails unquestioningly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNFi9VUeqWo

Barry Admin

It's a good question, and I've been sorting through my own thoughts about him.

Given I haven't really been able to leave the flat for the last month, I've spent a lot of time playing video games and listening to YouTube. Dankula has been popping up on some of the streams I gravitated towards, some of which would themselves be termed alt-light. So for clarity and disclosure, that's the whole "Internet Bloodsports" genre that's largely now imploded, plus streams by and featuring people who - like Sargon - came to prominence during Gamergate.

I've heard bits and pieces of Dankula but am still not massively familiar with him, but he seems like a really personable and down-to-earth guy. I absolutely believe he did the nazi pug thing for a laugh - to irritate his girlfriend and entertain the very small group of friends following him on YouTube.

You're absolutely correct that it's a shame he's lending his e-fame and legitimacy to the likes of UKIP. I did hear him say recently that his entire motivation for doing so was based round his belief in free speech - which he's now obviously very invested in, given his circumstances. He said that UKIP are the only party actually interested in standing on a free-speech platform, and that's why he agreed to join.

I actually watched his speech a couple of days ago, and the woman he mentions at the start - Based Amy - was someone I'd just encountered while looking at his twitter feed. She seems to be some awful racist bitch who was attacked by some thug recently, and who Tommy Robinson and his crew eventually managed to find.

So yeah... my thoughts currently are that Dankula seems like a well-intentioned bloke who is surrounding himself with a shower of shite, and while standing for free speech is very important, it probably needs to be framed in a thoughtful and careful way, i.e. the emphasis shouldn't be placed on wanting to screech about facking Muslamic Ray-guns with impunity.

I'm glad you prompted me to spend more time considering my thoughts on him here. Given the scepticism on CaB about his nazi pug video, and the speculation as to why he actually might have made it, I think he's probably currently playing with fire, and damaging his own worth as a free speech advocate.

Free speech must stop being so closely associated with the far right.

Paul Calf

Quote from: Cloud on September 25, 2018, 11:49:15 AM
I just don't understand what caused it to suddenly get popular and for everyone to become really bad armchair politicians.  The internet has been popular in homes since the late 90s and early 00s, Facebook since 2004, Youtube since 2005, Twitter since 2006, there's always been plenty of politics discussed.  Including when only nerds used it and netiquette rules suggested never talking about politics or religion.  Then suddenly terms like "SJW" are coined and it all goes completely batshit

These things just happen I suppose, it's like a fad, but more dangerous.  It's just how surreal it all is... as you say, things like videogames and anime are popular online so they're like frames of reference I guess, it just ends up being really weird.  It's easy to dismiss as a load of daft kids on the internet, as many do, but then they get into real places like UKIP and remind us why we have to (reluctantly) take them seriously...

I loved it in the early days. I used to stay up all night on BBses and, later, IRC and web message boards; a mate of mine remembers visiting every site on the internet in one afternoon in about 1992/93. We knew even then that it couldn't last,  although in those days everyone was convinced it'd be Ma Bell/BT who rolled out the barbed wire. The only rules were that you never took anything seriously and never, ever gave your real name for anything.

Quote from: sevendaughters on September 25, 2018, 11:41:29 AM
i'm hoping by 2020 it has a stable job and likes to have fun at the weekend.

People are working on it, although not everyone will like DRM restrictions, compulsory real-name sign-in and feed filters deciding what you can and can't see.

Zetetic

That's a plausible direction for the big social networks - but perhaps that just means we'll see niche forums (of some form or another) increase in popularity.

sevendaughters

Quote from: Barry Admin on September 26, 2018, 05:39:16 AM
I'm glad you prompted me to spend more time considering my thoughts on him here. Given the scepticism on CaB about his nazi pug video, and the speculation as to why he actually might have made it, I think he's probably currently playing with fire, and damaging his own worth as a free speech advocate.

It is amusing/depressing that the mass turn toward bad faith (where heavily rightward-leaning politicised analysis masquerades as poltically agnostic defence of free speech, generally) readings of everything - gamergate, UKIP, the journalistic output of Mike Cernovich and Tommy Robinson, Sargon, Tomi Lahren, etc. countless more - has led to people such as Dankula to wholeheartedly embrace the side of the political spectrum that seems* to generate much of this negative energy.

On original glance I thought the Dankula video was reasonably amusing and didn't merit conviction and any that did played the man and not the ball. Given that his conviction was arguably one of ultimately believing him to be acting in poor faith, it strikes me as plain daft that one would embrace UKIP here. It feels like throwing yourself out of a window as a protest at being burgled.

The mental limitations of the voices of the right and far right strike me constantly: they cannot see the mess of their own making because they are so enamoured of themselves, rather than positive and good faith conversation**, as a vehicle for a change that is actually a hardened status quo. Of course you're going to get banned from social media, Alex Jones, you helped to create this situation and now you suffer from it.

They are whipped in a whirlwind of negative and destructive energy and lack the wherewithal to move forward. Milo gets burned and instead of retreating into his wealth he slides down the greasy pole into dodgier realms of hate. Sargon and Katie Hopkins too. Weev is still stuck in Russia directing minions to attack from a remote hovel. They're grifters with no long con. Some of them are smarter, like Gavin McInnes, or insulated by actual wealth or status, like Jordan Peterson, and they'll persevere longer. But they'll drift away in the end. The centre cannot hold.

What burns me up is when people acting in what appears to be good or at least reasonable faith get burned because of this situation, like when John Maus went on MDE thinking it was just a goofy and visceral comedy show of fine repute. He didn't google the backgrounds of people and now he's an avatar of the alt-right to some and he can't put two, let alone one, albums out without that being the focus of the reviewer.

I've wandered off track a bit here but I couldn't help but notice Sam Hyde perhaps attempting his next transition - into actual advice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6rskPv6uA

*of course bad faith leftist memes and personalities and whatnot exist but they don't have official and normalised things like this do they: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/720/cpsprodpb/AED0/production/_90025744_033583881-1.jpg
** which is why I refute utterly any suggestion that they're trying to produce good conversation and we should listen and merely riposte with our brilliant counter-arguments

Cloud

Quote from: Cloud on September 26, 2018, 01:25:12 AM
And here we go, on a similar note, a contact I tend to hold in high regard has posted a good old rant about how "the SJWs" are infiltrating and destroying Linux now (because the team have told Linus Torvalds it might be an idea to step down for a bit and learn how to stop hurling insults, from what I can tell).  The second "SJW" rant I've seen in a few days from this guy, he's been thoroughly sucked in...

You know, all these conspiracy theories about (((the SJWs))) trying to take things over.  It's almost like SJW is one letter away from an anagram.

Ignore this, caught out by Poe's Law, thank God.

Funcrusher

Quote from: Barry Admin on September 26, 2018, 05:39:16 AM

You're absolutely correct that it's a shame he's lending his e-fame and legitimacy to the likes of UKIP. I did hear him say recently that his entire motivation for doing so was based round his belief in free speech - which he's now obviously very invested in, given his circumstances. He said that UKIP are the only party actually interested in standing on a free-speech platform, and that's why he agreed to join.

So yeah... my thoughts currently are that Dankula seems like a well-intentioned bloke who is surrounding himself with a shower of shite, and while standing for free speech is very important, it probably needs to be framed in a thoughtful and careful way, i.e. the emphasis shouldn't be placed on wanting to screech about facking Muslamic Ray-guns with impunity.
The thing is, where else is someone like Dankula going to go other than the alt-right or UKIP? There is little in the way of support for free speech on the left right now, the alt-right will reach out to someone like that so that's where they'll go. And then they're a hate figure of the SJW left and were always harbouring evil intent all along and that's that. Everything is so rigidly divided that you're either on board with every dot and comma of current woke orthodoxy or off you fuck to Jordan Peterson. We seem to live in a world like the mindset of someone with borderline personality that can only split people into wholly good or evil.

Barry Admin

Yeah, I don't disagree. As I've recently become a huge fan of ContraPoints, this part of the Verge interview sticks with me and is I think emblematic of the issue the left has these days:

Quote from: https://www.theverge.com/tech/2018/8/24/17689090/contrapoints-youtube-natalie-wynn
The wider left online, energized by a real sense that today's crises present an opportunity for socialist movements, is also starting to see her as an envoy for the cause; an articulate, attractively cool leftist who's reaching the digital generation where we live.

Nathan J. Robinson, editor-in-chief at the leftist online magazine Current Affairs, writes that what ContraPoints does is "smart ... persuasive ... fun. More of this sort of thing, please. God bless ContraPoints. She's a national treasure."

But such pressure makes missteps costly. Last November, Wynn was harshly criticized by many of her viewers for agreeing to a Vancouver debate at the University of British Columbia's "Free Speech Club" with Blaire White, a self-described conservative YouTuber who has shared coy tweets with Richard Spencer, enthusiastically supported far right activist Lauren Southern (whose most recent exploits include participating in expeditions to attack asylum seekers in the Mediterranean Sea and ginning up fear about immigrants in Melbourne), as well as Milo Yiannopoulos (whose connections to the extreme right, and actual Neo-Nazis are well documented). She has also donned blackface (which many understood to mock Black Lives Matter, a frequent target —though she has since deleted many of her YouTube videos attacking them) and once posted on Facebook that "if he ain't Aryan, we ain't marryin'." Condemnation was swift, and Wynn was accused of legitimizing a fascist.

"I think they are worth speaking to, for a few reasons," she wrote in a lengthy thread defending herself. "I have conflicted feelings about it myself but have decided to take the risk in order to promote a leftist perspective that I believe at least some of the audience is receptive to." While some claimed that she was being used as a naive prop by the far-right, she insisted that rather than seeing all her ideological opposites as "hopeless bigots," that many in their audience hadn't considered other points of view in any detail.

In the end, she told me, White "flaked out" on the debate, and Wynn ended up chatting with the moderator to a "pretty small classroom." But amid the call-outs, she forswore future debates with right wing extremists, almost petulantly, because "my heart can't take the backlash anymore." In a subsequent, searching Twitter thread she wrote about how the backlash had forced her to completely rethink her life.

So it's the uproar she caused that I'm pointing to here, but I happen to know that the paragraph about Blaire White has also changed substantially since I first read the article, and it's perhaps worth talking about that here - I'd meant to bring it up in the ContraPoints thread at some point.

Originally the article looked like this:



Quite a difference. Blaire White was incensed by the description, threatened a lolsuit, and I think did in fact get legal letters sent to The Verge. They responded with the above edits.

Now while I think that people who respond to hurt feelings with threats of lolsuits are definitely some of the biggest, most vindictive cunts around - and while I initially thought this was in some ways amusing richly deserved - as I looked into it and thought about it more, I became pretty uneasy about the whole thing.

Firstly, it is guilt by association. If you've talked to a bad person, then watch out, because it's catching! You can surely only be a bad person yourself.

This is fucking ridiculous, and the sort of bullshit that ContraPoints herself fell foul of, which is why Blaire White was even mentioned in the first place!

Also, while Blaire White does seem to be capable of extreme unpleasantness and of holding some hateful views, the examples given in the edited text above seem to fall apart with casual scrutiny. The "black face" was evidently a face mask, and ContraPoints herself caused some criticisms for the hilarious way she presents herself in her own video about "cultural appropriation."



"If he ain't aryan, we ain't marryin'" is, apparently, a meme, and Blaire White was shit-posting.

That kind of "gotcha!" attitude is emblematic of the problem I have with the left these days, when it comes to free speech. Everything is presumed to be bad faith, and there's a fucking bunch of pitchfork-wielding cunts hanging out about in social spaces online, thirstily looking for the next person to target and cast out. Whereas - yeah - all the fucks on the far right say "here mate, sure it's only bants fucksake, mon join us."

Funcrusher

Quote from: Barry Admin on September 26, 2018, 01:14:48 PM
Yeah, I don't disagree. As I've recently become a huge fan of ContraPoints, this part of the Verge interview sticks with me and is I think emblematic of the issue the left has these days:

So it's the uproar she caused that I'm pointing to here, but I happen to know that the paragraph about Blaire White has also changed substantially since I first read the article, and it's perhaps worth talking about that here - I'd meant to bring it up in the ContraPoints thread at some point.

Originally the article looked like this:



Quite a difference. Blaire White was incensed by the description, threatened a lolsuit, and I think did in fact get legal letters sent to The Verge. They responded with the above edits.

Now while I think that people who respond to hurt feelings with threats of lolsuits are definitely some of the biggest, most vindictive cunts around - and while I initially thought this was in some ways amusing richly deserved - as I looked into it and thought about it more, I became pretty uneasy about the whole thing.

Firstly, it is guilt by association. If you've talked to a bad person, then watch out, because it's catching! You can surely only be a bad person yourself.

This is fucking ridiculous, and the sort of bullshit that ContraPoints herself fell foul of, which is why Blaire White was even mentioned in the first place!

Also, while Blaire White does seem to be capable of extreme unpleasantness and of holding some hateful views, the examples given in the edited text above seem to fall apart with casual scrutiny. The "black face" was evidently a face mask, and ContraPoints herself caused some criticisms for the hilarious way she presents herself in her own video about "cultural appropriation."



"If he ain't aryan, we ain't marryin'" is, apparently, a meme, and Blaire White was shit-posting.

That kind of "gotcha!" attitude is emblematic of the problem I have with the left these days, when it comes to free speech. Everything is presumed to be bad faith, and there's a fucking bunch of pitchfork-wielding cunts hanging out about in social spaces online, thirstily looking for the next person to target and cast out. Whereas - yeah - all the fucks on the far right say "here mate, sure it's only bants fucksake, mon join us."

I haven't watched much of Blaire White's content, but she seems to be a typical right leaning libertarian whatever - ethnonationalist, fascist, hard right is just way over the top - it's just the left equivalent of Paul Dacre calling Corbyn a revolutionary Marxist/Maoist terrorist supporter.

The same thing happened when one of the anti-Gamergaters dared to meet for coffee with someone from Gamergate. And Laci Green is now the devil in SJW circles because she's making videos calling for some kind of civil dialogue. I watched her latest one and it was a very pleasant departure from what YouTube is these days. You hear callers from time to time calling into The Majority Report saying that they used to be a libertarian but had their mind changed by listening to Sam Seder debating with a libertarian, so this can happen. But the SJW orthodoxy is that anyone from the other side is irredeemable scum and that's that.

So what's the answer? Maybe people who can remember a time when things weren't like this can be of some use. I don't know.


bgmnts

Aryan doesn't even rhyme with marrying.